Hey friends! I’m taking a break from fitness and recipe posts to take you on a little social media journey with me on one of my favorite social media spots: Instagram! I am a visual person so Instagram is one of my absolute favorite SM platforms, but they did an update recently with algorithm changes that made Instagram not as “instant” and it made it a little tough on us bloggers to reach people. Bummer.

But, Instagram came through and decided to do a Snapchat-type update called Stories that allows people to be a little more spontaneous on Instagram. Yay! This new feature is a direct answer to the growing Snapchat trend and I’m loving it! I have a snapchat account but haven’t used it yet since, well, it isn’t easy to figure out and quite frankly I don’t want another thing to worry about.

Instagram Stories is pretty easy to navigate, but just in case you’re not sure how to use it, here’s a visual guide to walk you through. You can post random stuff to your heart’s content without feeling like you’re over-posting or posting less-than-great photos to your feed. The images and videos shared to Stories won’t show up in your feed and they will disappear after 24 hours unless you decide to add them to your regular feed.

Now this doesn’t mean you can post nudie shots: there is a report button for this and Instagram has been super fast lately about taking care of reports!

How to use Instagram Stories

First make sure that you have updated your Instagram app. The Stories feature is in the new update so you won’t see it until you update the app.

You can see friend’s stories at the top of your homepage. Swipe across the stories to see more

(I blurred the image out in this one since it’s not mine and didn’t want to “borrow” someone else’s personal photo!)

Once you click on the share your story button, here’s what you’ll see:

You can take a video or capture an image. Once you take a photo, here are your options:

While you’re editing your photo, if you swipe to the right and left you’ll get some different filters!

After you post your story, you can check on your story insights by clicking on the number at the bottom of the story photo:

On the list page of people who have seen your story, you also have options: you can delete the photo, save it to your camera roll, or add it to your Instagram feed.

Once you’ve posted some stories, you can see them and edit them by clicking on your profile image from your main profile page:

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Comments

Me too! I got a Snapchat account but never used it. It didn’t seem straightforward or easy to use, so I didn’t bother taking the time to learn it. Plus I don’t have to try and grow a following from scratch with Instagram like I would with Snapchat. I seem to get more views on my Stories than with the regular feed photos!